The Girl from Rawblood: A Gothic Horror Story

By Catriona Ward

"An impressively hectic spin on the Gothic tradition"—Telegraph

The winner of BEST HORROR NOVEL at the British Fantasy Awards by the author of The House on Needless Street!

What if it's not your mansion that's haunted—it's you?

Young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted by "her," a curse passed down through the generations that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak and death. For generations, the Villarcas have died young, under mysterious circumstances.

But Iris dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began, and where it must all end…

Perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson, Susan Hill, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Girl from Rawblood will pull readers through time into the early 1800s and 1900s, mesmerizing them with this lyrical story of cunning folk horror right until the breathtaking finish.

Praise for The Girl from Rawblood:

"Superb debut....Ward perfectly balances sensory richness with the chills of the uncanny."

—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

"The Girl from Rawblood makes a powerful contribution to the British literature of the fantastic…There's a touch of Ted Hughes here, Emily Bronte and M.R James in this eerie and by turns moving story that spans generations…A definite book of the year for me."

—Adam Nevill, award-winning author of The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive

"The Girl from Rawblood weaves a spell that both terrifies and mesmerizes. As each layer of mystery is peeled away, more haunting truth is revealed. The book leaves the reader breathless in its gothic tale of fear, family, blood, and love."

—Simone St. James, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781492637431

Catriona Ward

Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the US, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. Her debut Rawblood won Best Horror Novel at the 2016 British Fantasy Awards, and was a WHSmith Fresh Talent title. Little Eve won the Shirley Jackson Award, was a Guardian best book of 2018 and won the Best Horror Novel at the 2019 British Fantasy Awards. She lives in London and Devon.

Book preview

Front CoverTitle Page

Copyright © 2015, 2017, 2023 by Catriona Ward

Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks

Cover design by Adrienne Krogh/Sourcebooks

Cover image © Silas Manhood Photography, Hayden Verry/Arcangel Images

Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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sourcebooks.com

Originally published as Rawblood in 2015 in the United Kingdom by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Family Trees

Iris

Charles Danforth

Iris

Charles Danforth

Iris

Charles Danforth

Iris

Tom Gilmore

Meg Danforth

Mary Hopewell and Hephzibah Brigstocke

The Unknown Soldier

Meg Villarca

Ways of Escape

Iris

Reading Group Guide

A Conversation with the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Cover

For my parents, Isabelle and Christopher

Family Trees

Iris

1910

This is how I come to kill my father. It begins like this.

I’m eleven. We find the mare shortly after noon. She’s not been there long, so the foxes haven’t come yet. The flies have, though. She is glossy, plump.

Why? I ask.

Tom’s bony shoulder lifts, indifferent. Sometimes, things just die. He’s learned that well. In recent months.

The mare’s mane is black on the parched turf. Kneeling, I reach a finger to her. Tom pulls me away from the corpse. I expect a scold, but all he says is There.

I don’t see it, and then I do—in a clutch of bracken, ten paces beyond. Small and dark in the green shadow. Newborn.

What will you do? I ask.

He pushes a hand through his hair.

Pest question, Iris. What would you have me do?

This hurts. I’m not a pest, I say. "I’m trying to help."

He gives me a gentle shove. Pest. Since his mother died in March, Tom’s voice has been blank.

We watch the foal as it lies, head tucked into itself. It sighs. Thin cotton sides heave. Its coat is still slick in places. It’s too small to live, but it doesn’t seem to know it.

We could feed it, I say.

He gives me a look that means I live in a big house with floors shiny with beeswax and high ceilings where the air goes up into white silence and the linen is scented with lavender and tea rose. In the mornings, I have porridge with cream, milk from my silver mug if I am good. Tom’s knees jut through the worn patches in his trousers. He lives with his silent father in the drafty farmhouse with slates missing from the roof. He is in the fields before dawn each morning. There is no we.

I squirm. My boots are tight, my feet bloodless like the flesh of a gutted fish. I shed my stockings somewhere near Bell Tor. Beneath petticoats, my bare legs are gorse striped, beaded with blood.

Never works, he says at last. They won’t take it. Or they sicken. There’s something not right for them in cow’s milk.

I don’t want it to die.

You’re a girl, he says. You don’t understand.

So I know he doesn’t want it to die either.

In a March storm, Charlotte Gilmore stepped on a fold of her skirt. I see the moment reflected in Tom’s eye each day: the buffet of cold air on her face as she falls down twenty steep stairs; her dress, belling about her like a tossed blossom; the thunder that covers the sound when her neck breaks.

Come on, he says. When he’s upset, his voice rattles like a badly fitted drawer.

Our long shadows slide over the turf. The foal raises its head, questing. Tom seizes it. It twists and struggles and bats him with little hooves. Tom lifts the foal onto his shoulders, settles it there. Slender forelegs and hind legs are safely anchored in his fists. The tiny brush tail whisks, indignant. They go like that, back toward the farm.

They’ll be missing you, he tosses over his shoulder. You go off home now. Pest, he adds.

Wait, I say. "Wait!" I run on tight feet.

Henry Gilmore leans on the farm gate. His stare is wide, full of nothing. Tom stands upright before his father. At his shoulder, the foal flicks little ears. Tom asks the question once more.

Maisie’s colt weaned two days ago, says Henry Gilmore. His words are slow. He gives Tom his flinching glance. Once, he looked at you straight. Not anymore. He left his eyes in Tom’s mother’s grave four months back.

Will she— Tom stops.

Henry Gilmore shrugs. Could be. Don’t fuss her. If she mislikes it. You let her do what she will. He reaches a hand to the foal’s muzzle. Its nostrils tremble, move across his skin, scent his grief.

It’ll die either way, he says. Better quickly.

Might not, says Tom, and the air between them grows dense.

You’ll not make a farmer, Henry Gilmore tells his son, touching Tom’s shoulder with an absent hand. He leaves us, fades through the gate into the blue. Tom, the foal, and I watch him. Distance narrows him as he goes, whittles his figure to a dark drop crawling across the bones of the hill.

In the loose box, Maisie peers through a forelock the color of dirty snow. Clumps of mud cling to her tangled belly. She lifts a broad lip in our direction, shows us her butter-yellow teeth.

You’re not to go in, says Tom. Pest. D’you hear? No matter what.

He has a twitch above his eye. His eyebrow stutters with distress. The foal’s muzzle brushes his cheek. Tom’s hands tighten, sticky about its legs.

You’ll have to hold it, he says. Can you? If you… Yes.

A flurry of little hooves, and the foal shrieks like a cat. At length, it subsides in my arms. Its pounding heart, its thin new bones.

Tom says, We have to make them smell the same.

Pressed together, the foal and I shiver under the sun. I can’t see where Tom has gone. There’s the crack of his boots on the dry earth, the puzzling intricacy of wood, metal, catches, clasps, doors. He is back quickly.

This’ll do.

The tin is squat and burly. He pries the lid up with his knife, plunges a hand in. It comes up a shining paw, gloved in treacle. Dark shining loops. He covers the foal’s head and withers. He puts the stuff on its hindquarters, smooths it over the heaving flanks, over its belly. When he’s finished, my arms are crosshatched as if by the path of snails.

She won’t hurt it, says Tom. His hand cradles the foal’s jaw. Its eyes close. Long lashes on sooty lids. She won’t, he says again, not to me.

Over the stall door, Maisie shakes her massive head, blinks a bashful eye, lifts her rubber lip.

No, I say, she wouldn’t. Good Maisie.

The surface of the cart horse is vast. Her flanks ripple like a quiet sea. Tom watches. His eyes show the blue iris, ringed with white.

Won’t do to wait, he tells himself, or me. Maisie offers flared nostrils to his sticky hands. Yup, he says to her. All that. Soon. He slips into the stall, bolts himself in. His hands move to and fro, between light and the straw-scented dark. They coat Maisie’s muzzle and mouth with treacle. He works backward along the colossal sculpture of her, moves out of sight into the dim. She stands, but her head follows him, the glassy brown trail.

I pick up the foal. It lies like a sack in my arms. It has given up. Its hooves are no larger than shillings. The thud of its heart on my wrist. It smells of freshly crushed nettles, sharp against the farmyard.

Will it be all right? I ask.

Tom says nothing. I carry the foal to the stall door. It is quiet, leaden. He reaches, takes it through the crack into the dark. Then he’s out. He blinks in the sudden, honeyed day. His dark eyebrow quivers. I put fingertips to my wrist. The flesh there holds the memory of the foal’s heartbeat, weaving over my own. We wait, silent.

I can’t, Tom says.

So I look.

In the dim light, Maisie’s nostrils traverse the lineaments of the foal’s body. She licks the treacle from its muzzle, eyes. Her tongue sweeps down its length, a thick banner. The foal mews, a high complaint. Maisie levers it upright, nose under its stomach. Her ponderous head is as long as its body, an edifice of teeth and bone. The foal stretches. Its neck elongates beyond possibility, reaches upward in a graceful line. It can’t reach. It makes the high sound again. Maisie bends her legs, collapses, groaning, into the straw. Her eyes close. The foal feeds, a tiny, resolute shape by her monstrous belly. The tail whisks. Maisie breathes. Hayseed whirls in the slanting light.

It’s all right, I say. There is no reply.

Tom’s lips are moving silently. I shove a finger into his ribs. I fold a damp hand around his thin brown wrist.

Tom whips his hands from his ears where they have been painfully pressed. He goes to the stall door.

Good, he says in a rush. Good. Oh, well done, pest.

"Don’t call me pest anymore, I say. I don’t like it."

I know, he says. Sorry. I don’t mean it, Iris. You’re not a pest. It’s just…remember how you felt when the dogs got your rat?

Sorrow comes, and anger, hot.

Tom nods. That’s how I feel all the time now, he says. Every day.

I think about this. All right, I say. You can call me what you want. I don’t mind.

For the first time since his mother died, Tom takes my hand in his. We watch the mare and the foal. Bees hum in the falling afternoon. Sound bleeds back into the day.

Come on, Tom says at length. Home for you.

No. I am not ready to face Papa.

We’ll catch it if you don’t.

I’ll catch it anyway, but I don’t tell him that. I don’t know the way home, I say, triumphant.

You always say that.

"I’ll probably end up in Belgium."

All right, I’ll walk you, he says, as I knew he would. Back to the Home of the Difficult Pest!

That’s not its name. I leap on him, pummeling. Or my name!

I thought you didn’t mind anymore! he shouts through the blows. Pest! No, ow, no biting, pest! We roll, joyous, in the dusty yard.

***

I slip through the hedge. My eyes water from the sunlight, the breeze. But within the yew walls, there is stillness. The scent of lavender hangs in the air.

On the green, my father dreams. Banks of gray and purple frame him in his black suit. Open on the table beside him lies a moldering book, spine broken. There’s a lime-green jug, where glassy water shines. By the jug, a soft leather wallet, half unrolled on the warm wood. I can see the gleam of metal within: sharp, inviting. I look away. I must not go near my father’s pouch; I am never to touch it. That is one of the Rules. Behind him, the house rears up, warm and gray.

Rawblood. Home. It sounds like a battle, like grief, but it’s a gentle name. Raw from sraw, which means flowing, for the Dart River that runs nearby. Blood from bont, a bridge. Old words. The house by the bridge over flowing water. It has been in my family since I don’t know when. Rawblood is us, and we, the Villarcas, are Rawblood.

It’s a bulging, ungainly thing. Windows poke out along its lengths at no set distance from one another. Crazy angles of warm slate roof are purplish in the sunshine. It’s old, and everyone who has lived here has built something or taken something away. Like its name, it has shifted through time. But the house has its own sort of will. It has preserved its long U shape quietly, with the minimum of fuss. When I try to think of Rawblood, to draw it with words, a muffling whiteness comes. I can’t describe it any more than I can my own bones, my eyes. It simply is. It hangs in the foreground of everything like blindness.

These are among the first things I recall my father teaching me: that I must keep quiet and may not go among many people or to towns, because of the disease, and that Rawblood is written into us. Sometimes, I think Tom knows about the disease. Sometimes, he looks at me as if he knows something. Or perhaps I could tell him, and he’d still be my friend after all. I don’t care to test it.

I come near to watch my father sleep. His head nods to inner music. His lids shiver. I am near enough to see the low sun single out each silver whisker like a filament of steel.

A hand uncoils itself into the air between us, grasps my forearm, pulls me close. It happens fast and smooth, like the whip of sapling wood.

What have I caught? he murmurs, eyes still hidden. What can it be? A lion? He tightens his long fingers, and I shriek and say no, no, I am not a lion.

"I don’t believe it. You must be a lion. I am a famous lion catcher, you know."

He makes a show of feeling my arm, looking for paws, looking for claws. So. Not a lion. How’s this? He hums. A badger, then. A striped, snouty badger.

No!

A fish. A lovely, silvery fish for my supper. His fingers slide over my ribs, a rapid accordion, and the laughter takes all the wind out of me.

A person, I gasp. I am a person!

He opens his eyes. So you are. Well. I must let you go, then.

But he doesn’t. He looks me over, sharp. I had not considered my appearance. I’m covered in treacle, pony hair, and dirt. My pinafore is streaked with green, with black. The wind has teased my hair into peaks and horns.

My father says, Is it…horse that you smell of? What have you been doing, Iris? Where have you been?

I’m caught. So I tell him. About the foal, about Maisie, about the farm, backward, words stumbling over themselves.

He dips his handkerchief in the water jug, smooths the cool, wet linen over my arms. The ring on his finger gleams red and white and gold. The imprints of his fingers are white ghosts on my wrists.

"Gilmore’s boy, who is not a farmer, he says. Iris."

I wait. The hairs on my arms stand to attention.

He says, Gilmore’s not managing. No. Not at all. He takes my chin in the white wing of one hand and looks. His vast eyes shine like varnished wood. Now he’ll tell me I’m not to. He’ll say I mayn’t because of the Rules… I can’t bear it. The lavender is sooty in the air, my lungs. When Papa and I fight, it is always about Tom.

Don’t say I mustn’t have him as my friend, I say.

I do say so, but plainly, it has no effect, he says. You are heedless, and you are growing. I do not know what to do. Lock you up? We cannot continue to differ on this, we cannot…

The handkerchief falls to the table. I am new, damp, clean. I slip from his grasp and sit beside him on the lawn.

My father does not reprove me or mention my dress. He puts his hand to my head again, light and sweet. It strokes, gently picks bracken and straw and burrs from my indignant hair. Ragamuffin, he says to himself. Cushioned turf tickles my unstockinged calves. Nearby, sparrows quarrel in a rhododendron. Against the hedge, lying in shadow, a single daisy breaks the immaculate green of the lawn. It will be gone tomorrow.

I pick up the collapsed book. A ledger, really, like the one I have seen for the household accounts. It falls open in my hand. Some sharp scent rises from the spoiled pages. They are damp, oily to my touch. Faint lines of copperplate.

She does not trouble me; the fact being so plain, perhaps, that I am already damned. Other things haunt my dreams. A small blessing, given to a fiend.

What does it mean? I ask.

Papa’s fingers drum the paper, a soft tattoo. He says, Highly unsuitable. He takes the book, puts it from me on the table. Something is frightening.

I wipe my fingers on my dress.

My father says, So.

I look up, inquiring. He is giant against the sun.

If he is good with horses, it is settled. We need another groom; Shakes is getting on. We will have the young not-farmer. And—his hand cups my neck—Miller’s wolfhound has six pups. I will take you down to choose one in the morning. He will sleep at the foot of your bed. How do you like that?

Light fingers in my hair. Inattentive, sun-dazed, the words will not at first connect with meaning. Why would Tom sleep at the foot of my bed? Then I understand. I scrub my hand across my eyes, across the grass.

No, I say.

No? he asks. "I have given you two presents; all you have for me is no?"

Thank you, Papa. I don’t want the presents. I know this will upset everything, though the reasons are just out of my reach.

He regards me mildly. Iris, I am surprised at you. It will be good for the boy, and the Gilmores have mouths to feed, whether you like it or not. But you need not have the puppy if you do not want it.

He’s my friend, I say.

Now he will be your groom, Papa says. And you will treat him as such.

Yes, I say, because that is what one says to Papa. I’m dazed, ears ringing. But I will have no one. It will be hard to remember that we’re not friends anymore…

You will accustom yourself to it, he says. We are adaptable animals. When you have called him Gilmore a few times, it will come more naturally. When he has been your groom for a year or so, you won’t remember he was ever anything but.

Papa…

"You are disobedient, Iris, and you force me to act. You will not stay quiet; you will not stay under my roof or my eye. You court the disease and will not abide by the Rules." His hand strokes the soft leather case. His eyes have found the distance.

I rise to leave Papa there, warm and solid on the bench, silver head already nodding. I know my love for him. I am surprised by my hate. It comes like the shaft of a splinter on the smooth grain of wood.

Horror autotoxicus. The disease. Papa does not say, but I think it kills us, the Villarcas, and that is why we two are the last.

1908

I meet Tom the day that Papa tells me of the disease and makes the Rules.

I’m nine. I’ve never been away from Rawblood alone before. Papa wouldn’t like it. But he’s asleep in the garden, one hand swinging heavily in the sunlit air, pince-nez clinging to the end of his shining nose. I slip away like water. The lane to Manaton is quiet, dappled, hot with the last of the day. The hedgerows are high, filled with green and secret light.

My hands are crammed with two large, fragile pieces of apple tart, stolen from the kitchen table. The sweet, warm scent. I am alone in the world. Beyond Rawblood, beyond the reach of Papa’s stare. My arms swing long and free. Summer light. Sleepy birdsong clear as glass. The sandy shale good under my boots. Distant voices from the neighboring fields. Harvest is nearly over.

I walk slowly, digging each toe in, dragging it behind me as an injured bird drags a wing. I kick a cloud of fine grit into the air and squeeze my eyes closed. The rhythm of my feet—drag, shhh, kick… I have a strong sensation of dreaming, though I know I’m awake. Under my breath, I sing a song I have made up, about badgers. It has no set tune. When the time comes, I will find a stone to sit on or climb a tree, and then I will eat my two pieces of tart, but not yet… The rhythm of my feet on the road.

I stop. I am no longer alone. Behind me, there’s a girl, as if from nowhere. She stands in the bend. I think she’s been following. She’s thin, bigger than me but with a worried face, as if she’s left something at home. Two brown buckteeth peep between white lips. We stare.

Hello, I say.

She makes a noise and sticks her hands in her pinafore pockets.

Do you want some? I ask. I offer a fist. Apple slides between my fingers. Perhaps she will be my friend.

The girl looks at the pastry in my hand. Her teeth pull on her lower lip. She keeps worried eyes on me and points up the lane. Where you from? she asks. You from there?

Rawblood, I say. I try not to say it too proudly. I look at the two pieces of tart in my two hands. One each, I say with some regret.

From there, she says. It’s probably poison. Her eyes are on the tart. Does it have poison in it?

No, I say, offended. I raise a hand to my mouth. Sweet, crumbling crust. Sharp, green.

The girl bites her lip and stares. Then she bends quickly, fumbles in the sand. Something curves through the air. The sharp edge of the flint strikes the corner of my eye; everything bursts. Something else hits my temple with a crack. The world swings backward out of balance. The girl throws and bends and throws with perfect concentration, loading her hands quickly from the road. They all land. Some are small and sting. Some are large and make thuds on my flesh, sharp sounds on bone. I show the girl my back and hunch up small. Stones strike fiery on my kidneys, ribs, spine. Something hits the base of my skull and splashes white across my mind and eyes. Everything tastes of tin.

My cheek strikes the road with a thump. It stretches before me like a landscape. Through the pulsing in my ears, I hear the soft give, the crunch of road as she comes. I try to get up. My arms and legs are buckets of damp sand. She comes on with soft steps. Hot stuff trickles from my scalp to my chin, warm red drops. The sounds I make, like kittens drowning.

Her shadow. Her feet are before me, bound tight with rags. No shoes. She bends. Her grubby, shaking fingers uncurl my fist, lift the remains of the tart from one hand and then the other. I try to bite her; my teeth graze her arm. She turns quickly, the hedge quakes, and she’s gone.

I sit in the warm road. I don’t know what to do. I can’t go home; Papa will see blood and cuts and know I disobeyed. I should never, ever have left… A tooth is loose. I cry in hitching sobs.

Around the bend, footfalls. I push into the hedge, through the hawthorn, the bramble, to the gray, cold stone wall at the heart of it. Sharp, unkind branches tear my dress. Something living crawls in my ear. I hold my breath. It’s quiet. The wood pigeon murmurs. The breeze moves, brings the first scent of evening.

The footsteps stop just by.

Bit of blood, says a voice to itself. It stutters a little on the consonants, like a badly fitted drawer. All right in there?

Something brushes through the leaves like a monster. I bite.

Ow, the voice says. It withdraws. No—ow.

I feel a bit sorry. And I hate and fear the dark hedge. So I come out.

The boy stands in the road, clutching the red place on his arm where I bit him. He’s about my height, with bare, brown feet and a fishing pole. You bite pretty nicely, he says. Why you all bloody?

Girl came and took my tart, I say. It was apple. I show him my hands, fragrant with crumbs.

He nods, serious. Oh, yup, he says. That’s a stinker.

Stinker, I say, enraptured. What’s your name?

Tom, he says. You?

Iris. It’s the first time I’ve told it. It’s strange and a little powerful.

There’ll be some taste left, he says. So we sit on the verge and lick my gummy fingers. There’s earth and little bits of bark mixed in, but it still tastes like apples. I’ve never shared anything before. His tongue tickles. I laugh. It hurts.

He sees. Took a right pasting, you did, he says.

I say, I don’t want Papa to see the blood.

All right, he says. Come with. He takes my hand.

The stream runs shining over fat stones into a small pool of deep green. Rowan trees lean across it. The banks are covered with blackberry bushes. Midges dance in the cooling air.

The cold water shocks our bodies. We scream and paddle. Tadpoles and minnows flee from our white feet, corpse-like in the river water. The blood spirals off me, away into the stream. We eat shiny blackberries until we’re stained purple. We wash it from us. My dress dries crumpled in the sun while Tom fishes. He doesn’t catch anything.

Should have a trout to show for it, he says. "Might not get it too bad if I have a trout."

You ran off, I say. So did I.

Meant to be getting the hay in, he says. He tells me about his dad, his ma, where they live, which is a farm with cows.

I love cows, I say. Big eyes and eyelashes.

They kick, he says. Lots.

When the midges have risen all about us and the skyline has cooled to a milky gray, Tom says, Home, I suppose.

I say, Come home with me!

Can’t, he says, and I catch his apprehension.

With me, with me, I sing. Come home with me… I dance around him and pull tufts of his dark hair. I dance and sing loudly, because I don’t want to be alone in the dark lane.

Pest, he says. Well, I’ll walk you.

Papa sees us as we come down the hill in the last of the light. He comes out of the door like a bull. Iris, what were you thinking, to leave me so? Do not go off! Do not! The mist could come down! He trembles.

There is no mist, Papa! I promise. He is always thinking there will be a mist, and it is very frightening for him.

Papa looks at me, the cuts and bruises, the dirty dress. He takes Tom by the scruff, lifts him clear off the ground. Buttons spring from Tom’s shirt as Papa shakes him.

What was done to her? Papa says. Speak. What hurt?

I didn’t, Tom is saying as Papa shakes, and I shout, No, no, it wasn’t him!

Who are your people? Papa asks. They will hear of this. And now a hiding, the worst of your life.

Tom Gilmore, he says, teeth clicking as he’s shaken. Trubb’s Farm.

I tug at Papa’s sleeve. He helped me, I say. "Papa! It was the other one who threw the stones…"

Papa drops Tom like a sack of wheat. Tom sits surprised on the ground. Papa covers his face with his hands. Tom Gilmore, he says.

Tom says nothing. Trying to guess which answer means trouble.

I say, Papa, please leave him alone.

Papa makes a noise. I forgot, he says. I promised, and I forgot. He stares at Tom. You may feed him, Iris. But out here. Not in the house. He turns and goes back toward Rawblood, his back shaking up and down.

Tom and I stare after him. He’s crying, Tom says.

I know. There seems little else to say. It’s no more or less peculiar than the other things that have happened today.

Might be some tart left, I say, and that thought eclipses all others.

***

Papa dresses me with tincture of iodine. The scent is strong and red. My bedroom is very snug. The fire is lit, as if I am not well. It leaps busily and crackles in the grate, warm on our faces. The night is outside. We are inside.

Why were you crying, Papa?

I was reminded of a promise I made once, he says. To your mother. I had forgotten, which is very bad, as one must keep promises. But not only that—I was angry, Iris, because I fear for you. I have always been careful to guard you, have I not? I have tried to teach you right, as a father should?

Yes, I say, stricken. Why, Papa? Why did the girl throw the stones? Why did she think the tart was poison?

Others fear us, Papa says. "Our family. Dear heart, they will hurt you if they can. We have…a disease. Like Rawblood, it has run in our family forever. It lies dormant within us like a sleeping foe. It is named horror autotoxicus. Servants do not like to work at Rawblood because of it. So we have Shakes only. Even he does not stay at Rawblood but lives above the stable. No servants sleep in the house. For a moment, his face is faraway and blank, and then he goes on, Horror autotoxicus is unusual; it is not caused by contagion or by a virus. It is caused by feeling."

That is strange, I say, thinking of a cold I had last summer. What does it do?

It makes you very ill, Papa says. It makes you hot with fever, and visions come to you of terrible things. You slip into a dream, where monsters roam. In the end, you lose your mind, so that you no longer know the places that you love or the faces of your family. Sometimes, it causes you to harm others.

No! I will always know your face, Papa; I will always know Rawblood…

"I wish it were so, Iris. You must keep very calm and live quietly, because horror autotoxicus can come on if you are excited or upset. If you have a strong feeling that you cannot control, you must tell Papa at once. It could be the first sign."

All my feelings are strong, I say. "I cannot possibly tell you all of them!"

You must try, he says. He tuts and dries my face. But do not despair. We can prevent it. You are in no danger as long as you live quietly at Rawblood and do not run off. It is a rational thing, which we can approach with reason. I see that I have expected too much of you, Iris. Your disobedience shows me that you cannot be trusted to apply your own judgment. So I have made Rules, which you will follow and which will keep you safe.

Papa takes a piece of paper from his pocket. He reads it aloud to me, then pins it to my bedroom door.

1. Other children: not friends.

2. Servants: not friends.

3. The disease: a secret.

4. Papa’s medicine pouch: forbidden. When Papa takes medicine: leave room.

5. Eight o’clock to noon: reading with Papa.

6. Afternoons: play in the garden. Not out of the garden.

7. Bed: at seven.

8. Books: as good as people.

9. Tell Papa everything.

These are like promises, Iris. Do you understand?

I nod. The loveliness of the sun and the water and Tom have dissolved into tiredness, and I hurt everywhere. I had not known my body could hurt so. I am no longer eager to see the world. I am not sure it’s a friendly place. Horror autotoxicus… Even the name is horrible. But I will be all right. Papa will make sure of it.

I will obey all the Rules, I say. But I will keep Tom! It’s called a bargain, Papa.

Papa looks at me long. You are your mother’s daughter, he says. It is not possible, Iris. He cradles my head in a long, white hand. He holds me in a gentle vice and looks into my eyes. Say them after me, he says. The Rules.

I squirm. Papa, too tight…

Say them, Iris. I must be sure that you understand.

Other children, I say. Not friends… I say the Rules, again and again.

Eventually, Papa releases me, puts a hand on my head, and I know I am forgiven. He says, Very well. We will read.

Hervor! I say.

Always Hervor. Such violent tastes. Very well. He takes the book from where it’s open by the bed. We read.

***

It is not really called Hervor, but The Waking of Angantyr. It goes like this. Hervor’s father, Angantyr, dies, and he is buried with a famous sword called Tyrfing. It means measurer of fate, or sometimes, it is called bane of swords. Hervor is a fighter. She wants the sword. She is quite bad-tempered about it. I like this, because it seems to me people are often too good in stories.

Hervor goes to her father’s grave and opens it like a door. She goes into the underworld, which is a dark place full of bonfires. She wakes Angantyr from his sleep. This is another reason it’s my favorite. If my Papa died, I would go and wake him. Angantyr is angry at being woken. He says that Tyrfing is a terrible sword that is cursed. It will perform evil deeds. And both sides of the blade are poisoned, so if you touch it, you die. Hervor says, I am your only daughter. I am heir to the sword. I’ll take it and cut myself on the

Reviews for The Girl from Rawblood

[bookmarque · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Deeply atmospheric, creepy and slightly disjointed in presentation, this is a novel where everything connects. If you love rabbit holes that delve into darkness, madness, haunting and the unexplained; this is the book for you. It is not for the squeamish however. Without going into really squidgy detail, Ward adds to your feeling of unease with scenes featuring madhouse conditions circa 1917, vivisection from the 1880s, multiple miscarriages and pasts peppered with all manner of abuse. It culminates in one woman; Iris. A girl raised in isolation and fear.The story is presented in multiple timelines all centering around the Rawblood estate - once owned by an English family and lost, rescued by Italian, Don Villarca. Is it cursed, haunted or is there just madness in the family? Is it from the Italian influence or has it been there all along? Thanks to the family tree, you can see how people are connected, but the anticipation of how exactly they will connect is a nice touch. There are many instances of foreboding and free-falling into the unknown. Usually I need more concrete plot and explanations, but with this book I just went with it.We start with Iris and her childhood friendship with farmer’s son, Tom. It is a clandestine friendship because her father, Alonso, has given her rules she must live by in order to stay safe from a hereditary family curse/disease. One that caused the deaths of his parents and ancestors going back generations. An infamous “She” who kills when a person in the family loves or feels strong emotion. The rules keep her isolated almost entirely - she has no friends and doesn’t attend school. The big estate has no servants except for one man called Shakes, but he is hardly adequate and brings nothing to the raising of a girl in the early 20th century.The story is mostly Iris’s, but we get storylines from her mother, Meg; father Alonso; Meg’s brother and Alonso’s friend Charles, and finally Alonso’s mother, Mary. Pay attention, take notes and don’t discount anything as incidental. The affliction Iris’s family endures is mysterious. At first I thought it was something blood-borne that Alonso was trying to cure. But clearly it’s supernatural, too. Werewolves? His and Charles’s experiments with heredity and vaccination put all sorts of ideas in your head. Through a pivotal scene we are told that Charles has died and also his sister (Iris’s mother), but we don’t know who dies first. If Charles did, is this how Meg comes to be at Rawblood? Then there’s the tit-for-tat drugging - first as students Charles drugs Alonso in his part of their 50-day-free-for-all-use-me-as-a-guinea-pig experiment; then 20 years later at Rawblood with A drugging C with morphine. Now they’re both addicts. Of course it’s to “protect” him against “Her”, but still - ick. C confronts A and calls him a psychopath. Later in another strange tete-a-tete C says that he caused A’s morphine habit when they were students on purpose, to bind him to him so he wouldn’t leave him (C fears that A isn’t a homosexual and would leave him eventually). He fears that Alonso is not as much of a deviant as he is. Twisted for sure. It reminded me of women who get pregnant in order to hang on to their men. So desperate. Before, during and after these escalations and confrontations between Charles and Alonso, “She” scares the hell out of C over a series of disturbing nights, he hangs himself and so we know that he dies before Meg.Next is how she came to be at Rawblood and after first meeting her I’m not surprised Iris goes nuts. She was in the “care” of some couple after her and Charles’s parents died. He basically had nothing to do with her and the abuse she suffered affected her badly. She has really strange ideas and fancies herself a witch. Does she really have psychic powers? Just before her escape from the awful couple, she join minds with C at the moment of his death. He senses her there as well. Oy. Next up is Mary Hopewell, the woman who loses her hold on Rawblood due to penury. She is packed off to Italy with a hired companion by poorer relatives. This is where the Villarca connection comes in and it is sinister, albeit colored by her companion, Miss Brigstocke’s narrow, warped viewpoint. Don Villarca is more than strange; he’s a little vicious, aggressive and has odd manners and mannerisms that verge on the violent. He brings out the worst in Mary and she relishes in this forbidden freedom. In the end, when it becomes clear that Mary and Don Villarca will get together Brigstocke tells her this - “As I held your ring, moments ago, between my fingers, the sight came upon me. I have never felt such living evil. This marriage will bring sickness and death. It will lay waste to generations. It will grow black flowers in the black land...You will not live. I implore you, do not do what you intend.” p 267Well that pretty much sums it up. The ring belonged to Mary’s ancestor and so it seems that hereditary evil or hauntings or madness of two family lines will come together with this marriage. It’s in this Italian vignette that we meet the mysterious and ultra-loyal Shakes who is the only servant remaining at Rawblood by the time Iris is a young girl. The tale carries on through Mary’s marriage to V and their move to the newly-rescued Rawblood. Alonso is born and things go off the rails. Bit by bit, Mary goes blind and loses her mind to the horrors of “Her”. The end is gut-wrenching and awful. Again, it’s unclear whether she is mad or if “She” has killed again. By this time, Iris is well and truly out of her mind. We are always brought back to her thread. She connects with Mary at the point of Mary’s death in a similar way that Meg connected with Charles. She is observer, participant and victim. It’s crazy and convoluted and a lot of fun. Things fold over, weave and connect in every way imaginable. In this scene Iris not only observes “Her” tormenting Mary, but becomes “Her” and threatens Mary’s child who is Alonso and also Iris’s father. See what I mean? Now we jump back to Meg (Iris’s mother) and a scene with Robert the butler at Rawblood. They are in the kitchen and he is sharpening knives. It is rigid with tension and a very eerie scene. Robert is the brother of a nearby farmer. When he was a child, he mistakenly ate some nightshade berries. This was during the time that Alonso and Charles were at Rawblood committing their horrific vivisection experiments. Alonso refused to treat him or let Robert into the house and this is what basically makes Charles realize how sick A really is. Anyway, I have no idea why Alonso later hires Robert as butler, but he does and R has an affair with Meg. She basically forces his hand so to speak because she needs to sweeten him so she can sacrifice him to make her baby (Iris) live. We know from earlier Iris scenes that Robert is dead, his brother is pissed off and Tom thinks he’s his uncle.It’s insane, of course, but Meg still pursues her witchcraft and knows “She” must be appeased. When her labor starts, she makes for the little cave on the property, the one that for time out of mind has been used by the locals for offerings and sacrifices to some god or other. She gets into difficulty and it is the ever-present Shakes who comes to her rescue. He brings A and she actually delivers Iris in the cave. The same cave where, years later, Iris and Tom go and Iris has her first experience with “Her”. We know from a previous timeline that Tom is Robert’s nephew, but now we actually find out he’s Robert’s son by a maid at Rawblood. She is paid off and gives the child to Robert’s brother to raise. Which makes me wonder if Alonso forbade Iris to see Tom because they were ½ siblings.So as if this wasn’t lunatic enough, it goes to eleven. There’s a section called the Unknown Soldier set in 1919. Even though Tom has gone off to war - it’s not him. All of his letters are being kept from Iris because she’s in the insane asylum (for killing her father with an overdose of morphine, or a jab to the heart with the needle, it’s unclear). Ok, so after a bit of reading this Unknown Soldier’s narrative, it’s clear it’s Iris. Seems she has escaped the asylum, stolen a soldier’s uniform and is going home. When she gets there, she and “She” merge into one and she passes through every encounter we’ve seen so far in every timeframe...right back to her own birth in the cave. Picture a snake swallowing itself and you pretty much have it.I can’t untangle it. It’s crazy and ingenious and unfathomable. I enjoyed it immensely.

[debkrenzer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a ghost story. The family that resided in the house called Rawblood had a hereditary disease whereby they must avoid strong feeling and excitement and most of all they need to stay away from other people.I seriously think that this would have been a better story had it been a lot shorter. The author kept going back and forth from past time to present time which sometimes got very confusing. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was really wishing that I had not requested this book. The book took several hours that I could have spent on another book which I think I would have liked much better. As I said, this one became so confusing and unfortunately I kept reading it, hoping I would figure something out and it never happened.Again, I think this would have been much better as a short story without all the confusing background history stuff thrown in.Thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was pretty disappointed in this book until the last couple of chapters when the payoff hit (which makes it all better in retrospect but does make for slow going). I might have wished, too, that some of the grosser gothic tropes (g*psy curse, evil foreigners) had been subverted more than used straight. But wow, that ending.

[obi2015 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is in the first place an attempt to write a classic gothic tale.A family, living in a lonely manor on Dartmoor,is haunted by" something ".All the right ingredients for a gothic success story and yet...the first part, although confusing due to several different timelines, was mysterious enough to keep one's attention but then the book becomes even more incoherent and messy and seems to lose all purpose...
The story ( if ever there was one) is completely lost. Too bad because it has the right building stones....